U.S. Doesn't Know if Saddam Is Alive

MATT KELLEY

Published
8:00 pm EDT, Monday, April 7, 2003

Associated Press Writer

Pentagon officials said Tuesday they can't say whether Saddam Hussein was killed in the bunker-buster bombing of buildings in Baghdad, but that command orders are still being issued to key elements of Iraq's military.

"I think the end game is the end of the regime and that's much closer than people thought it was," said Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, vice director of joint operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

McChrystal told a Pentagon briefing that some key elements of Saddam's Republican Guard were still operating _ and appeared to be following orders, possibly from the Iraqi leader.

"The Republican Guard are receiving instructions, but in many cases not following them and not capable any more so they're not an effective fighting force," McChrystal said. "But he (Saddam) still controls elements of the Special Republican guard and death squads."

Asked about the importance of eliminating Saddam and his sons, McChrystal said, "As much as they can exert any kind of influence _ even if its limited to Baghdad _ we'd like to reduce that."

McChrystal also addressed questions about the deaths of journalists in Baghdad when a U.S. tank fired on a hotel where many are staying. "We are at war," he said. "Our forces came under fire, they exercised their inherent right of self defense."

Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said she had been approached by many news organizations wanting to get reporters into Baghdad. "Baghdad is not a safe place," she said she told them. "You should not be there."

McChrystal said U.S. forces were "rooting out resistance wherever we find it," adding that U.S.-led forces now hold "air supremacy over the entire country."

Thus far, 30,000 aircraft missions have been flown, not counting helicopters, McChrystal said. He also said that planes had dropped 20,000 tons of missiles and bombs and had flown 40,000 tons of cargo into Iraq since the war began.

McChrystal said he was unable to provide specific information at this time on whether Saddam had been killed in Monday's bombing raid on a building where he was believed to be meeting with his sons and other leaders. The site remained in Iraqi hands Tuesday.

The blasts caused by four one-ton bunker-penetrating bombs dropped by a U.S. warplane left a smoking crater 60 feet deep in the upscale Baghdad Mansour neighborhood.

"We characterize that strike as very, very effective," McChrystal said. "What we have for battle damage assessment right now is essentially a hole in the ground at a site of destruction where we wanted it to be, where we believed high-value targets were."

"We do not have hard battle damage assessment on exactly what individual or individuals were on site," he added.

Workers must sift through the building's rubble to locate any remains, then test them, other Defense Department officials said.

Also, U.S. ground troops raided two of Saddam's palaces and destroyed statues of the Iraqi leader in his capital.

In a telephone interview with reporters at the Pentagon from an undisclosed location in the Persian Gulf, a member of the B-1B crew that attacked the Baghdad site said the bomber had just finished an aerial refueling over western Iraq when it got the order to fly to the target. Twelve minutes later it dropped the four bombs, said Lt. Col. Fred Swan, the B-1B's weapons system officer.

Swan said they dropped two standard versions of the 2,000-pound Joint Direct Attack Munition, known as a GBU-31, and two special "bunker buster" versions that penetrate a target before detonating.

Of the intended target, he said he and the rest of the crew "knew it was important," and "might be the big one."

"We thought it was, given every thing we heard," he said.

Swan said the crew was told by an airborne air controller that directed the B-1B to its target that it might be "the big one."

He said the B1-B crew did not actually look at the target after the bombs were released from an altitude of more than 20,000 feet.

Even before Monday's bombing, Iraq's leaders were finding it difficult, if not impossible, to direct troops and other government loyalists, Pentagon officials said.

It wasn't the first time the U.S. tried to kill Saddam with bunker-busting bombs. A March 19 strike on another compound in a residential Baghdad neighborhood opened the war. Leadership targets of many kinds, including government ministries and command and control centers, have been hit numerous times throughout the campaign.